I’ve been a Beatlemaniac ever since I was thirteen years old. I can still remember the first time I heard the Fab Four: I had just woken up, and I could hear the radio in the kitchen, where my mom was doing whatever moms did in kitchens in 1964. “Holy smoke,” I thought. “I’ve never heard anything like this before!” The song I was listening to was “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Popular music, of course, would never be the same; and neither would I.

That is why I am so excited about a new movie I just heard about from the good people at The Fest for Beatles Fans (formerly Beatlefest). The film is Nowhere Boy, and unless you’ve just dropped in from another galaxy, I don’t have to tell you it’s about John Lennon, but I do have to say it’s not about John the Beatle, but his earlier years and his burgeoning partnership with Paul McCartney.

The movie premiered in Great Britain last December, and its U.S. release is set for October 8th, one day prior to John’s 70th birthday. It was shown at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and I have it on good authority that the film is indeed brilliant.

I have seen only a trailer, but that is enough to make me believe what I’ve heard. Matt Greenhalgh’s screenplay is based on Julia Baird‘s memoir, John Lennon, My Brother, so I am confident as to the film’s credibility. I’ve been told that the word “Beatles” is not even mentioned in the film, and that no Beatles songs are heard, and that fascinates me even more. Nowhere Boy promises to be an insightful cinematic glimpse into the Beatles’ Precambrian period, so to speak.

As the filmmaker Akira Kurosawa once said, “It is the power of memory that gives rise to the power of imagination.” All creative artists reach back in time, often to childhood experiences, for inspiration. And John and Paul are no exceptions. There is even scientific evidence, such as that gathered by neuropsychologist Elizabeth Gould, for the paramount importance of early influences on adult creativity. And it’s clear that the early memories of John and Paul shaped the songs they wrote and sang.

Paul’s “Penny Lane,” for instance, is a sublime evocation of a world viewed through the tinted lens of memory: “In Penny Lane there is a barber showing photographs / Of every head he’s had the pleasure to know.” As in many stories written by widely diverse authors, we visit a barber shop, a universal place of social communion. Then we are treated to a phantasmagorical cityscape inhabited by other clearly defined, uniformed people such as a banker, a fireman, and a nurse — easily recognizable folks among whom almost anyone would feel comfortable.

Paul has talked about his mostly happy childhood relative to John’s stressful one. Compare the happy-sounding “Penny Lane” to the dark, foreboding sonic landscape of John’s childhood memoir, “Strawberry Fields Forever”: “Nothing is real … Living is easy with eyes closed / Misunderstanding all you see / It’s getting hard to be someone … ”

Could Paul have written “Strawberry Fields Forever”? Could John have written”Penny Lane”? Perhaps the answer is no; perhaps their profoundly different emotional experiences as children and teenagers precluded them from writing anything different from what they actually did produce. But their ability to combine those priceless experiences made John and Paul the perfect team. And that’s why we still care, and that’s why I can’t wait to see Nowhere Boy.